


Rubs Off

by Gelsey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gelsey/pseuds/Gelsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts, oddly enough, with kindness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rubs Off

It starts, oddly enough, with kindness. The kindness of a beaten old man giving her some of his food as they sit in the dank dungeons of Malfoy Manor. Luna protests, of course. She is a good girl, a kind person. But Ollivander insists, and so she eats or it will be wasted.

Waste not, want not.

Before long, she takes the food on the assumption he will give it to her. She cannot help herself, she who has never really been hungry. She cannot help herself, even as his cheeks grow ever more gaunt. His kindness becomes her slow slide, pushed onward by the wickedness of those who starve them and beat them.

Rescue is so unexpected, but Luna latches onto it with desperate hands. As she lies, recovering, in Shell Cottage, she finds that she feels oddly un-guilty about Ollivander, who may never completely recover.

Instead of thinking of the man who might have saved her life, she slips her hand into Dean’s. She takes his comforting and his offers of security. But she finds, when it comes to it, it is… hard, to return the comfort. So she smiles and says nonsensical things until he thinks she is as normal as Luna has ever been.

But there is a small, hard spot on her heart, formed by her time of capture. And with time, it grew. She could shroud it behind looniness, because she knew it should bother her even if it didn’t.

And though she once cared, when Luna went out journeying in search of mysterious animals, she did not mind taking samples and harvesting the animals that died. She isn’t a poacher, oh no, not that—but where once she would have wept, she only sees an opportunity.

She wonders, sometimes, how wickedness could rub off like that.

But in the end, she doesn’t wonder enough to change it, or to really care.


End file.
